A few directors and writers have told me that all writers should try their hand at acting. I can see the benefit of that, but I'm interested to know how many writers out there have actually done any acting (not acting your own material). What did you learn from it?
One thing actors understand: dramatic conflict. But you can probably learn about that without acting yourself. Read Uta Hagen. I'm of the opinion that you'll learn a lot about screenwriting from any number of related disciplines. For example: - Directing. Once you make a film out of what you wrote you'll realize how you've written three times more dialogue than you need. - Acting. You'll realize your conflict is vague and intermittent. - Cinematography. You'll learn to tell the story visually, and how to replace dialogue and exposition with image. - Editing. You'll learn how to end a scene without having your characters say, "Good bye, see you tomorrow," and start a scene without your characters greeting each other and say, "Hi, nice to see you." You'll also learn not to stop the momentum at the end of a scene and start it up again at the beginning of the next. - Sound design. You'll learn that that audio is a storytelling resource you too often forget about.